I've used it three years ago and liked it a lot:
- it's fast
- it has/had filters what GA didn't have
- it monitored downloads without inserting any JS code that GA required back then
- the interface is smooth and shiny, compared to grey-ish GA interface, designed by a programmer (naturally)

I haven't used Clicky for a while, but I would use it without hesitation, if I had the extra budget and needed the extra benefits, which may be critical, that GA doesn't provide.

The only thing is that it can be slow and data doesn't get kept for more than 12 months.

But it gives you greater insights then Google because it's not a tool that has been designed around the Adwords platform. It should, as it does for my clients, give you a better understanding of what is going on per visitor, whereas Google always makes you look at your bottom line, and tends to steer you away from Analytics. Even if it's part of the GA's name. Lots of different script implementations, you can even host it yourself I think.

API from hell. BAsically you can cream off what you want and plug it into other tools you use

Unfortunately, it'd help to store the historical data, indeed. At least, to compare seasonal traffic for the same keyphrases/pages.

I know about the API and it might be useful, but so far I hadn't had the need to use it. Besides, I'm not a developer, so it's a limiting factor. Maybe I'd create my own dashboard or merge it with Drupal somehow And yeah, serving the script yourself might be faster, but so far, I have found that GetClicky is pretty fast (especially, compared to Google Analytics). I have a hard time reasoning to host Clicky yourself, other than to include the code in a single file with other JS analytics (clicktale, etc) or template JS code.

I already changed one of my sites to GetClicky. I'll see how much good info it's gathered after a month or so.
I do agree with the fact that it's faster in loading - just the size of the javascript itself.

I've been using GetClicky to track stats on one of my sites. Honestly I don't see much difference in terms of the features in comparison with Google Analytics but I definitely like the idea of not letting the big G! knowing every detail of my site.

It seems strange to me that google would buy a company, convert their product into Google Analytics, give it to webmasters, then start to dismantle it.

Requirements change.

Back when they wanted your site data and GoAn was an access point. And even if you never knew it (although some of us were howling in the wilderness) they shared only a fraction of what was being mined. (welcome to better analytics, by the way ) Now they are seeing if they can keep that access to your data with an obvious retriction in data sharing in return. Because this no query data change affects not only GoAn but all analytics programs there is the obvious side benefit (to them) of making Webmaster Tools look like a solution - it is not. But realisticly few GoAn users will quit and some number of non-GoAn users will sign up to Webmaster Tools.

It seems strange to me that google would buy a company, convert their product into Google Analytics, give it to webmasters, then start to dismantle it.

EGOL, that doesn't seem strange, that's very Googly exactly

Google is taking good care of Google.

Yup-yup

As I was sure SEObook.com would have something gnashing to say about the topic, sure enough, there is a few articles, about the real reason of why Google hid the referrer data:

I think it is that its competitors in the online advertising space like Chitika and Chango are using search referral data to refine their (retargeted) ads and they're getting some astonishing results. In some ways, you could therefor describe this as mostly an anti-competitive move.

Are any of you using Woopra? It is my absolute favorite analytics tool. I have it set up so that I get a desktop popup on the bottom of my screen each time I have a visitor. It tells me where the visitor is from, what they are viewing and how they arrived at my site.

That's one thing I love about Clicky. I have the chrome extension that keeps me informed about how many people are on a site at the moment, where the last few came from, what keywords got them there, what part of the world they are in, and a little chart. Hang on, I'll go take a couple of screenshots to show what I mean. Will come back here and add them in in a moment.

Those just drop down when I click the clicky icon in my browser toolbar. The icon in the toolbar itself has a little number on top of it that shows me how many users are on my site right now, without me having to do anything (don't have to click to see that). So for instance, if I normally see 5 or 10 there, and suddenly I see 80, then I know something big just happened and I'm getting lots of traffic.

When I was using Clicky, I liked to watch traffic in real time, pretty much the same that you look at:- sources- keyphrases- landing pages.It's pretty hypnotizing

Donna, how did Clicky tie a visitor to a visitor's name (Amanda diSilvestro, who is a guest blogger, I believe)? Are they logged in users and Clicky had identified them itself or you've specified the name yourself, based on activity? Thanks.

Makes sense. To save me hunting for said manuals, does anyone know of the top of their heads the difference between GetClicky and Google?
I wonder if Clicky does not count clicking a link to leave as a "bounce", only counting browser close / back button?

Yeah, you can use it with GA.
I'm not sure, if there's a plugin for this, it's pretty easy to setup by inserting the code in the template, anyway. Then again, a plugin could make it easier to use more sophisticated tracking of events.

yeah, at the moment I just shoved it in the footer.php which I assume is less stress on the server than another plugin. Maybe will look at the plugin, if it provides reports in the admin panel on page views for each article that could be handy.